Fears over abused special needs girl raised 15 years earlier

Traces of semen were found in the girl’s urine sample taken at the Temple Street children’s hospitalPaddy Cummins/PCPhoto.ie

Concerns raised by a hospital consultant that a child with special needs was being sexually abused were dismissed 15 years before the abuser was convicted last March.

William, known as Liam, Lynn, 72, a retired bus driver from Ballymun in Dublin, was jailed on March 3 after pleading guilty to two of 10 charges of sexually abusing a girl with multiple conditions, including cerebral palsy, dyspraxia and epilepsy. The abuse began when she was 13.

In 2001, two years after the abuse started, Peter Keenan, a consultant at Temple Street children’s hospital, told the Eastern Health Board (EHB), the forerunner of the HSE, that semen had been found in a urine sample from the girl, who was then 15.

Keenan said the testers at Beaumont…

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